Stateless: The Politics of the Armenian Language in Exile

Stateless: The Politics of the Armenian Language in Exile focuses on two centers of Western Armenian literary production following the Armenian genocide to examine the intersection of violence and art, displacement and language vitality. In looking at the work of a post WWI Paris-based, short-lived transnational literary movement called Menk [We], it explores how the politically violent origins of dispersion informed the aesthetic development of a new literature and the articulation of literary belonging in exile. In looking at the post WWII activities and publications of the Writers’ Association of Syria and Lebanon, it traces how the Armenian diaspora’s literature was nationalized in the absence of state institutions. It shows that when Beirut took over as the nucleus of the diaspora’s literary activity and intellectuals began to construct a unified and coherent narrative of the diaspora, the city came to be positioned as the thread that connected the current activities to the pre-1915 literary tradition and the Menk generation was excluded from the modern Armenian literary canon due to its writers’ attempts to understand diasporic experience as interrupted time. Ultimately, it argues that the adoption of the category of the "national" as the organizing logic of literary production in a diaspora setting limited the long-term vitality of this stateless language, for it ignored the multifarious composition of diaspora communities.

About the Author :
Talar Chahinian lectures in the program for Armenian studies at University of California, Irvine where she is also visiting faculty in the Department of Comparative Literature. She coedits Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies.

Review :
An exemplary engagement with a number of current debates about diasporas and nations, national literatures and world literature, trauma and mourning, resulting in a book that will draw attention from multiple and vigorous intellectual constituencies.-- "Khachig Tölölyan, professor emeritus, Wesleyan University" An impeccably researched and beautifully written study of the cultural, literary, and linguistic contributions of Armenian writers in 1920s Paris, during the formation years of a diaspora whose intellectual center of gravity would later shift to Beirut. Chahinian provides an elegant and lasting contribution to genocide and catastrophe studies.-- "Françoise Lionnet, Harvard University" An invaluable study of the effects of the Armenian genocide on the language and literature of Armenians scattered across the globe.-- "Nasrin Rahimieh, University of California, Irvine" Chahinian's account of literary production in a minor language by writers 'operating on the margins of the majority culture'will serve as an insightful resource to address conceptual, methodological, and pedagogical questions in Lebanese, Middle Eastern, and SWANA diaspora studies.-- "Mashriq & Mahjar"